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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody, it is Tim Miller with the Bulwark here with my colleague, the publisher of this year, Bulwark, Sarah Longwell. We have some breaking news out of the main Senate race. Sarah, you know they just can't have it. Let us have a Monday.
- [00:16]
B
No, we just had a three day weekend. It's time. This was supposed to be a slow day. I didn't have anything on the afternoon, but here we are. Big news about Platner. Disturbing news about Platner. Yeah, why don't we run through it for people who haven't seen.
- [00:30]
A
Sure, we'll, I'll start here just kind of letting people get into the live. I'll run through. The story is from Politico. I'll just read you a couple of the parts. Here is the allegation. A woman who dated Maine U.S. senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections. An allegation Platner denies. The woman, a 41 year old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, had detailed the alleged incident to Politico in three interviews over the past two weeks. Politico also spoke with a man Reese got dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident. They reviewed some documents, including emails. We'll go through that. Some of the details of the allegations. Racat said she had an on and off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. The relationship was more than two years long before he entered her rural main home uninvited one night in late 2021. So under five years ago, he was deeply intoxicated and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual. I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me, she said. I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself like this is no longer my choice. Raysa Kat was one of the women that New York Times had talked to, we should say. But at that time she gave kind of a more generic assessment. This is separate from the woman who had made the more notable allegations in the New York Times story, who's a Republican political operative. That's not the case for Raisakot. She said this. One of the reasons I didn't come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics but not supporting him as a person. I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person. She provides some corroborating evidence, including this Facebook message exchange. A friend, I guess, is asking her for advice about whether to fix up Platner with a third person. Razakat says to them, he can be charming and funny. He's a decently intelligent person. He's not all bad, but I ended up in a bad situation with him and I will just very politely call him consensually careless at times. She goes on when drunk and says he lies. Also, there are some of the more explicit details of, of the story here, including race. Got saying that I don't, I don't know how to say this in front of Sarah. He finished inside of her and that she was worried about that. And then after she realized she was not pregnant, she messaged him on Instagram, you know, saying that, you know, give reading of the riot act and saying that she was having contact with him. She since deleted those Instagram messages because she was trying to block it all out. So that is the allegation very serious. Of course, Platner put out kind of strange 2 minute long video where he talked about, you know, all like his campaign and I guess we'll talk about all that, but I just kind of want to play the key part of that video. Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward. So anyway, a lot there. I just thought that was pretty noteworthy thing to say. We're taking time to reflect on the best path forward. We don't have a lot of time. July 13th is the last day for him to drop out of the race. But he maintains denial of the reporting, but not really a very forceful pushback type of thing. If you're planning on staying in the race, I would think that your response might be different, but Sarah was wondering what your initial reactions to it are.
- [04:28]
B
All right, so first of all, the reporting here is quite excellent because they have a lot of details and I think for some people right now who are saying whose instinct is to defend Platner, they're going to say why? I need to see more evidence. And actually if you read the reporting carefully, the evidence is pretty strong. Right. Like they have her, she's one of the women who's in the New York Times story. But she's very clear in the piece. They're very good at sort of laying out why in the piece she was somewhat more circumspect. And it also, you know, having looked at the New York Times piece when it came out, Lindsay Fifield got in a big fight with the New York Times. She is the Republican operative who says she was coaxed into telling the story in the New York Times and ultimately was angry because she felt like her story became central. And I think it became central because ultimately she had the most, like, the biggest accusation in there, which was some sort of, you know, forcing her into a room and holding her arm behind her back. And so that was as close to sort of like an. That was an assault allegation that sort of got got framed as him trying to restrain her in some way, whatever, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't a knockout blow. This woman was also in that piece, but wasn't. Didn't come forward with a rape accusation. And let's be clear. Tim saying he's uncomfortable saying it in front of me. I'll just be really clear. Like, this is a rape accusation. What is in this piece?
- [05:51]
A
Yeah, no, the word rape wasn't my problem. It was just talking about ejaculating.
- [05:55]
B
Okay.
- [05:56]
A
It was. Made me uncomfortable in a moment there.
- [05:59]
B
Okay, well, I don't know what. I don't know what to do about that. It's. It's okay.
- [06:03]
A
What's it. I wasn't blaming you. I was just saying that, you know, saying ejaculation. I'm just. I'm building up to it. Anyway, I'm sorry. It's serious matter.
- [06:11]
B
It's okay. And so. And one of the things that I had a couple of the nuance. So the nuance of the reporting was strong, and I had a couple initial reactions. One is the text message that you showed, though, is frustrating to me because right at the bottom of it, the friend asks, so she says, forces himself on people. Question mark. There's a response there. And I want to know what that response says. I just. Not in there. But the other thing to me that was notable was this idea that they had been sort of seeing each other casually. He shows up hammered, walks into her house, and like, the idea that he's denying it. This is what happens when one person's sober and the other person's hammered, Right. Like, if. If. If she is sober and he is sort of overwhelming her or doesn't remember it the same way, but he was really drunk and she was at home sober. Like, we. This is her. We take her word for it. This isn't two people who were hammered. And. And so I just. I feel like at some point, and it was always like this. I was willing to open. Be open to the idea that an apology for the past Reddit behavior, for the past terrible things that he said, an apology and saying he was wrong and he had changed was okay. I could accept that. That was always the problem, though, with the new allegations, when they started to come, the ones that were more recent, because it started to lay the predicate that he hadn't changed. And this coming out, this isn't from 20. Even if it was rape is rape. There's no like, hey, we get to, you know, you later. It's okay, right?
- [07:59]
A
Station. Yeah, yeah.
- [08:02]
B
But this was. This was not that long ago. And it was recent enough that this woman has the receipts and people that she talked to. And so I just think there's no reason not to believe this account. And what we know of his character does not exonerate him from behavior like this. And he's right, though. It is a distraction. And I think that video, when you say it's a weird video, to me, it's like, okay, that's a trial balloon, and he's waiting to see if people pop it. Right? He's waiting to see if the reaction is, no, you've got to stick this out or you've got to get out. And I think, and I'm just going to. This is the last thing I'll say, but we did a focus group of Maine women right before the New York Times story came out, and we asked them, okay, what? And they were all sticking with Platner. They were all like, we're with him. But we're like, okay, what would be. If there was something that made you walk away, what would it be? They all said, a sexual assault allegation. And, you know, I just said, they said, there's no way I would be able to vote for him if he. If something came out that it was substantiated that he had sexually assaulted somebody. Because then in my mind, he should be in jail. He shouldn't be in Congress or in the Senate earning a paycheck off of taxpayers. Then Sharon says, I agree with Jen. She just said, exactly how I feel. I'm looking at the long game. I want Collins out. He. If he. It'd have to be pretty bad. It have to be pretty bad. And then the moderator said, do you have any idea what that would be? And Sharon said, baby, sexual assault. And Danielle said, probably sexual assault, or going back to what someone else said, that if it was the case, like, this is people talking. So we would hope that our justice system was taking care of that, then we wouldn't be in the situation where they'd be able to run. But you know, I mean, look at the rest of our government, like, who knows? So there's that. And then Kim said, I would think like if he was really, you know, accused of sexual assault and that was a true thing, like that would take him off the option to vote.
- [09:58]
A
Yeah, well, that's good to know. I guess that main Democratic voters aren't going to approve of somebody that commits sexual assault or rape. Look, my view on this is, and this is why I think that the video is weird. And I think it goes back to like a fundamental first principle on all this stuff, which is like, why does the main Senate race matter? Like, why do we, why does anybody care about this? Why do we care about this when voters do with us? Like, everybody comes to these things with their own motivations. And like, I've been very upfront. I think most of us in the bulwark have, like, I just, I think it's critical that the Democrats take control of the Senate next year. And I would be willing to swallow people that have very different ideologies for me on a wide variety of issues. Same if they're willing to, if they are going to take the Senate. Senate race is different than a governor's race or a mayor's race or a presidential race that you're one vote out of 100. And it's, and it's extremely important that who knows what's happening with 82 year old Trump in 2028. Like, like the top priority needs to be making sure that if the Democrats control both houses of Congress, they can check him, they can prevent him from putting, you know, who the hell knows he floated Ted Cruz today on the Supreme Court or Eileen Cannon. They can stop Eileen Cannon from getting on the Supreme Court. They can investigate his corruption. Like we could go down the whole list, right? Like the Senate has huge oversight and advising consent powers and like Susan Collins has not been better moderate the spectrum. We've talked about this a lot. And so for that reason it's critical that the Democrats are smart about who they nominate and Democratic voters are smart about who they nominate, that they're responsible. And my view on Platner from the start was always like, it would be interesting to try kind of a DSA lefty, populist, working class guy. I wish it was in a state that was less important to the Democrat Senate majority because it was a risk every time this has come up. That's what I said it was A risk. And I'm like, this is why it's a risk. If he then stays in this race past July 13th and even more stuff comes out and you hand the Democrats the Senate seat in the race that should be the easiest to take this year. I think this is the most important thing. And why I'm frustrated with his quote where he's like, I'm going to take a few days to decide. It's like, no, if you didn't rape this girl, woman, if you didn't rate this woman, then you should be fully, you know, all, all in on campaigning for yourself and depending, defending your honor and doing so respectfully, obviously, to the accuser. But, like, you should be fully in on making sure that you're pulling out all the stops to demonstrate to people that you are trustworthy and they can rely on you and they should be behind you and you should win the Senate race to do the whole, like, oh, well, I don't know, you know, we'll see how things go over the next couple days. Like that. Tell that is somebody to me that like, either thinks that there's more stuff coming out or doesn't have faith in himself that he can finish this race. And to me, that is the top sign that you have to move on. You know, and like, obviously, I mean, if the facts of this are true, that's the number one reason they have to move on. But I just mean from a political standpoint, it's like you, the Democrats cannot take, cannot have a nominee in the state that they most need to win, number one, the state that comma, one that should be the easiest to win and put it behind somebody who seems unwilling to even fully defend himself in the face of these accusations and who seems to make me think that more stuff is coming out. I don't know. So to me, that just says, okay, it's time to. Time to move on.
- [13:35]
B
Yeah. And I think that there's, look, there's, there's two, there's two parts of this to talk about. There's the moral part of it and there's the political part of it. Now, I think a credible accusation of rape, I think that's the ball game personally. But the political side of it is like, this is he. It is now because like you said, there's no statute of limitation on rape. Like, there's going to be questions of whether she's going to bring charges. Like, think about this for a second. For people who are sitting there right now thinking, oh, you should stay in and brazen through this. Republicans have so many, you know, credibly accused rapists, not the least of which is the sitting President of the United states who has 28 sexual assault allegations against him and has been adjudicated of rape.
- [14:26]
A
Like, yeah, I love the people in the comments or whatever on Twitter, people reply to, like, talk about Trump. What about Trump's rapes? I'm like, I have Trump's. We talk about Trump shit all the time. Trump opposed Trump three times. Like, it's crazy that he's in there. Yeah, it's worse. It's worse. The accusations against him are worse. Okay, so.
- [14:44]
B
And the scale of them are worse. And he shouldn't have been elected president. And basically, that's the whole reason the Bulwark exists, is to oppose Donald Trump because we think he is morally and ethically unfit in every way to be a part of this country or to be running this country. And that's. We've been doing that for eight years. And so nobody can hold a candle to us in terms of saying that Donald Trump should be gone and that a big part of the reasons were allegations, like the sexual assault allegations. He should have been gone from the moment that the. The Inside Edition, whatever tape came out
- [15:17]
A
on the bus where he admitted to sexual assaulting women. He bragged it, okay?
- [15:22]
B
So he's gone. He should be gone. And I just. I also want to say this, that I'm with Tim. Like, I was. I was really trying to get there on Platner because it was important and also because for me, it was not a question of ideology. Like, sometimes people in the chat or wherever are like, well, Sarah's a Republican, guys, all of us were Republicans at the Bulwark. Every single one of us, except for the new people, right? But everybody who founded it, right? Bill, Tim, jbl, Mona. That's what we were all doing, okay? And we all walked out on Trump because he was of bad character. He was a horrible person, and we want to do everything we can to stop him. The main Senate seat is deeply critical. So do you know why it's important right now? Is that there is still time. There's still time. You know, the. The. The. Let's see. Platner would have to formally withdraw by 5pm on July 13. Then a vacancy in the nomination is created that has to be filled by July 27th. Now, look, it's bad. It's bad that we are in this situation, just like it was bad when we were in this situation with Biden. But that. That is like, that is the problem with the people who don't make good decisions about who the candidates should be. It has nothing to do with progressives versus centrists. It has to do with do you have a qualified, competent candidate who can beat the other person effectively? And right now the answer on Grant Platner is no. On the political question, I agree with that.
- [16:54]
A
And this is one thing, again, just to just talk about the progressive factionalist fight about this for a second, because that does drive a lot of all this. I mean, we can just be honest. Like, a lot of people's fakes about Platner are downstream from their takes on ideology. Right. And it's like a lot of the people who are very big Platner supporters have been defending him. If these same accusations had been out against Josh Shapiro, they would be the first ones to say that he should be thrown overboard and vice versa for the most. Obviously there are people of goodwill out there. But like a lot of this is, is. Is downstream of that. I think that the progressive side has like some decent arguments and critiques of the Democratic establishment and how they ran campaigns from 2016 to 2024 and like nominating candidates who put working class interests first and who are more clearly anti the stupid wars that we've gotten into, I think is probably smart and swing states. Right. Like, you can sell me on that. So to me, like, I'm not, this is not wrapped up in that for me. And that's, you know, depending on the details that might not, I might not agree with every position that is underneath those two kind of tent poles. But like, I'm open to that. The problem with Platner always at the start was again, just the risk. Like, look, when I wrote, I pulled this up. I wrote a triad about the reason for Democrats needed outside candidates about a month or two ago at the bork.com and I talked about Platner as an example and also Seth Moulton in Massachusetts and some others. And you know, I wrote in the thing, like, to be frank, I'm still a little concerned about what, what might come out about his past before November. Like even in the case for him that there are some political upsides to being more of an anti establishment, to be more of an outsider to caring about the working class. Like, I saw his upsides and simultaneously recognize these risks. And like, now they've come home to roost. And if they're not true, if it's bs, then like, he's got to be like, this has to be all hands on deck. Like, you got to be out there. You have to have your other ex girlfriends out there on TV today. You've got to have people advocating for you. You've got to be releasing these text you have with this woman. You know what I mean? Like, you got to be doing, you got to be doing crisis communications. Like, if someone was to falsely accuse me of rape and try to kill my podcast, like, let me tell you, you know, I would not be out there being like, you know, I'm going to take a couple of days to think about this. Like, that's crazy. That's not how you respond to this thing. And so, like, I just, like, the stakes are too high to, like, say, hey, let's let that. Let's kick the can until after July 13th when the time is up and like, see if anything else comes out. Like, literally, the fate of the Senate rests in the balance here. And so unfortunately, we're kind of relying on Graham Platner and the people around him, the people that pushed him in this campaign to do the honorable thing here so that we can win. And it's, you know, we can get into who that might, who a replacement might be. But to me, I'm like, I don't have strong factional interests in that question.
- [20:04]
B
Yeah. And, and look, somebody said this in the chat. So I guess it's true that Hassan Piker is also calling him to get out. Look, everybody's going to call for him to get out, I think, because the accusation and the reporting is quite credible.
- [20:17]
A
Yeah. Here's Hasan Piker, for whatever it's worth. People don't know Hassan Piker, like, really. DSA left has been pushing, campaigning for a lot of these candidates.
- [20:24]
B
He and I agree on very little.
- [20:27]
A
I was not going to go there. Hasan Piker, that is curtains. That is the trifecta, okay? This is the trifecta of a reliable allegation. It's holy. I believe this allegation. I believe this allegation. And she said he goes on to say he should. He should drop out.
- [20:42]
B
So look, me and Hassan Piker on the same side, who to thunk it. I. The. Listen, I, I just. And I think this says something good about the Democratic Party. They don't want to endorse somebody who's credibly accused of sexual assault. It says something really, really bad about the Republican Party. It's why we all left, that they don't care about this type of thing. That character doesn't matter at all. And I think that, look, Graham Platner consult could have sold me a redemption story if it was true that he was redeemed. And I don't mean in a religious way. I mean in a, in a way of like, he was a really, had a, you know, he was in a really rough place for a long time, but he changed. He got married. He, you know, he was trying to live a decent life and listen, and I don't even care about people's like, overall frailties or like, you know, like, if there was texting and he and his wife worked it out. Okay, whatever. Those are not things to. I'm not going to clutch my pearls over that. A rape accusation and I see some people in the chat saying things like innocent until proven guilty. This isn't a legal adjudication. This is a question of a, like, is this person okay to be in the actual Senate? But, but also it's a political question of can a person win with this much baggage? And the answer is no. Susan Collins was going to be hard to beat under the best of circumstances. And the other thing we know, as this race has gone on to Tim's point about learning. Right. I think both Tim and I were pretty open to the idea that, like, okay, what is the, the way that you attract more young men to the Democratic Party is sort of important. Yeah. Is this, is this kind of a rougher populist? You know, is that going to be attractive? No. Who is Graham Platner's base still? It is college educated suburbanites. That is who it is. Like, it's not the working class voters. And, you know, I do think a lot of those women who were supporting Graham Platner, they're going to have a tough time with this accusation. That's why I read the focus groups and you guys can, or people can say, oh, who cares about what four main women said? I think that's relatively representative of Maine women who are like, yeah, if he did sexual assault, that would be it for me.
- [22:58]
A
I want to talk about a couple of subtexts. I, I do want to talk about the path forward. The first, I just want to go through a little bit some of my concerns about that if I, if Platner is to stay in the race again, I just, we'll see. Like I, I've seen, I see some feedback from people who are like, this is convenient timing. This is actually pretty inconvenient timing for everybody involved. For the Republicans for sure. Wanted this, wanted no more stories till after July 13th. So. And because Platinum are pretty short window to do something, he could drop out. And the rules, as Sarah mentioned beforehand, I just will remind people of that, is that if you dropped out by the 5pm on the 13th, so a week from now, the party would have till 5pm on July 27 to select a replacement and get that person on the ballot. One of the concerns I'd have on that is that, like, here we are again with the pro democracy movement, that we're part of, going around what people think of when they think of democracy, actual voting results. That's right. And doing some other process. And in both cases, I'm sure in the Biden case, I was for it, though. I was for a quick primary, too. I think that. Anyway, we can redo that another time, but I think that it undermines trust to have, like, party elites doing this. And I think that the one thing I said about Graham at the time, that I'll continue to say is that his message was resonating with people in Maine. People of Maine were excited about him. They wanted him. They voted for him. They. They didn't want Janet Mills, the incumbent governor, again. And so now to, like, say to those people, okay, hey, no, sorry, here you go. Like, we're going to give you somebody else. I do think it's problematic and complicated. Yeah. And I'm so for it. But, like, but it should. I just think it should be grappled with.
- [24:59]
B
Yeah. No, it's not. I mean, this was. Look, I, I understood why people liked Graham Platner. He was never for me. Once he was the nominee, I was sort of interested. I was always interested in the experiment. I'm very interested in experimenting with lots of different kinds of candidates in different kinds of places because I want to win. I want Democrats to hold the set, to, to win the Senate and to win the House. I want Donald Trump's corruption.